Gaddafi: the ruler the West embraced and disliked

Moamar Gaddafi's days are numbered. He is most unlikely to succeed in stemming the tide of the opposition, supported by NATO air cover and arms from Qatar and Egypt.

He faces the same degree of disgrace and humiliation as two other fallen Arab dictators before him: Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. The biggest lesson in all this for the West is not to support dictators when it suits, and for the remaining Arab rulers to reform or face a fate similar to the fallen dictators.In the tradition of all dictators, Gaddafi had increasingly become delusional. At the helm for 42 years, he thought that he had become infallible and that there was nobody to replace him, with the exception of his equally delusional son, Saif al-Islam. He ruled on the basis of a politics of fear, torture, patronage, divide and rule and self-adulation and aggrandisement. He misused Libya's oil wealth in pursuit of such bazaar and idiosyncratic ideas and practices that simply demeaned Libya in the eyes of the international community and stigmatised the Arab people as a whole.

Yet, he stayed in power for so long not entirely because of his own endeavours. There was also the Western countries love-hate relationship with him. They loathed him because he was, as the late US president Ronald Reagan put it, 'the mad dog of the Middle East' and therefore an unpredictable rogue and supporter of international terrorism, who needed to be watched and feared. But at the same time, they found it expedient to embrace him as a tolerable rogue, at times elevating him to the position of esteemed leader and potential ally. This was because he presided over Libya's oil wealth, to which the West wanted access, and opposed radical Islamism in any form that the West wanted to fight - something that remains a top priority to the present day. Whilst implicated in a string of terrorist operations against Western targets - ranging from the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in 1986, in which scores of American servicemen were killed, an act that invited a US retaliatory air attack on Tripoli - to supporting the Irish Republican Army in its operations against Britain, to the blowing up of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie (Scotland) in 1988.

Although Gaddafi was sanctioned and isolated as a result, the Western oil companies and their governments never found it desirable to sever all ties with him. As soon as he announced in 2003 that he was foregoing his nuclear program - a tactic spawned by his London School of Economics graduate son, Saif - London was more than willing to forgive him and lobbied Washington to do the same. Former British prime minister Tony Blair made a highly publicised and personal visit to Gaddafi's tent in the desert to embrace the great leader and welcome him back into the Western fold - an act which was quickly followed by the US and its other allies. Gaddafi once again became the darling of the West, and a blind eye was turned to all his predatory and self-centred behaviour. Once more, he was the leader with whom the West could do business. Saif was received in the Western capitals as someone representing the new and enlightened face of what by all measures remained Gaddafi's brutal dictatorship.Ending Gaddafi's rule has by no means been a cheap affair. It has proved to be very costly for both the Libyan people and NATO, which provided air cover for the opposition, based on UN Security Council resolution 1973, for five months. It has taken a heavy toll on the Libyans in blood and material. In the process of overthrowing Gaddafi, the Libyan people have been badly scarred and much of Libya's infrastructure destroyed - similar to what happened in Iraq as a result of the 2003 US-led invasion of the country that secured the demise of Saddam Hussein. Like the Iraqis, Libyans may not recover from what has transpired so far for a generation to come.

Meanwhile, for the Libyan opposition, it is only the beginning of a very long, arduous and possibly bloody journey in transiting Libya from a dictatorship to what might be acceptable to a majority of the Libyan people and embraceable by the Western powers which helped it. Libya is a highly tribal society and the opposition is made up of different groups. There is no certainty that with the fall of Gaddafi's regime as the main focus of their unity, the opposition will not disintegrate. It is also possible for Libyan politics to take an Islamist direction - similar to what seems to be on the horizon in Egypt.

As for the other Arab dictators - from Bashar Al-Assad of Syria to Ali Saleh of Yemen – they now have two options: either to do whatever it takes to suppress the opposition in order to avoid facing the same fate as their fallen counterparts, or unfold a vigorous reform agenda and make a somewhat honourable exit. They are well advised to take the second route.

Amin Saikal is professor of Political Science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University.